As a founder and developer, I have a passion for technology, startups, and contributing back to my community. I call the Sunshine Coast in Noosa Australia home and live between the beach and acreage "off-grid" nestled in the Noosa hinterland.
In Early 2025 I co-founded Mulga Defense Corporation, an open source infrastructure platform that brings the core services of AWS—like EC2, VPC, EBS, and S3—to environments where running in the cloud isn't an option. Whether you're deploying to edge sites, private data-centers, or need to operate in low-connectivity or highly contested environments, Mulga OS gives you AWS-style workflows on your own hardware.
During 2020 - Dec 2024 I've worked with the AWS Startups team in Australia as a solution architect, helping founders and startups grow and scale on AWS. I have the pleasure to work with a wide array of founders and CTO's from startups and scale-ups around Australia, supporting SaaS, FinTech to Life-Sciences startups and everything in between.
I've spent the past decade sharing my vision for the Sunshine Coast as a future tech mecca of Australia. In 2013, I presented this concept in a TEDx talk titled "Silicon Beach."
In 2000, I founded Atmail and as CEO and grew the company significantly to over 3,000 customers in 65 countries worldwide. The company was acquired in 2024 by Inbox.com. Atmail provides email platforms for ISP, Telco and business customers worldwide. I've had the pleasure to deliver our product to customers such as Interpol, DreamHost, MediaTemple, SingTel, Princeton University, KDDI and thousands of other companies. Our software continues to power over 150 million user mailboxes.
Tech wise, I'm an avid Golang programmer, love learning about Machine learning and ML at the edge. My first computer was a C64, and I have fond memories of providing a dial-in BBS back in the 90's and discovering Linux with the Power Macintosh Mklinux port in 1996 which spear-headed my passion for technology ever since.
Another passion project as co-founder is Coding From Beach a group of 600+ Sunshine Coast-based coders and entrepreneurs. We aim to inspire our local tech community with in-depth technical discussion, encourage networking with like-minded geeks, and connect programmers with entrepreneurs to launch new ventures.
I 😍 adventures - I've had the pleasure to travel 4x around Australia by 4x4 as a digital nomad and live 4 years in the stunning Australian environment I call home. My next major adventure is to set sail around the med & live abroad in Japan -- stay tuned!
Learn more on my site ben-duncan.com